Was Shea Touched By Olympic Spirit?

JEFF JACOBS

February 21, 2002|By JEFF JACOBS; Courant Columnist

He bulleted past the midway point at nearly 80 mph, yet Jimmy Shea's headfirst slide for Olympic immortality was running one-hundredth of second behind schedule. He hit the three-quarters interval and nothing had changed. He was .01 behind leader Martin Rettl.

Maybe the thought was irrational, but, then again, legends are made and shattered in these sliding disciplines -- bobsled, luge, skeleton -- by less time than it takes to blink away a tear. This grand and wonderful story, 80 years in the writing, was .01 past its deadline and destiny demanded a reason.

Was Jimmy Shea's heart too heavy from the death of his grampa four weeks ago?

Could it be?

Had this weighed him down? Would this cost him Olympic gold?

``I made two small mistakes going down,'' Shea would say later, ``but I had been doing really well on my last split in practices. I just relaxed. I knew I could make up time at the bottom.''

Did he know? Did Shea really know? By the time anyone could consider that question, the .01 had long since come and gone.

Maybe it was the card from Grampa's funeral that Shea carried inside his helmet during the first Olympic skeleton event in 54 years. Had he turned his head a smidgen, the smidgen that would knock him down to second place? Had his mind wandered for a flash to consider the three-generation tale of his family? To consider the death of a man who had only one wish in his life? Jack Shea, the 91-year-old patriarch known as Chief among the Shea clan, wanted to see Jimmy in this Olympic skeleton race. That was before Jan. 22, the day he was killed by a drunken driver in Lake Placid.

``Here,'' Shea's sister Sarah said. ``We used them as funeral cards, but my grandfather used to give them out when he was alive as sort of business cards. He liked them.''

Sarah turned over the card. There was the face of a proud young man, a body strong and virile, skates ready to crease the ice in his beloved hometown. This was the body of a two-time speedskating gold medalist at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid. This was the face of a man who knew the Olympics meant much more than those two gold medals. And, then, no ... too much time already was lost on this thought. The .01 was gone and Jimmy was searching for the finish line.

The 15,000 fans at the Utah Olympic Park screamed as Shea passed the final turn. His dad Jim, a Nordic combined competitor at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck, held his breath. His body shook slightly. Competitors from different nations closed their focus on the finish line. These were competitors who had loaned Shea a piece of equipment here, given him a hot meal there. Jimmy Shea used to sleep in Bavarian barns and Swiss bobsled sheds and use four-man bobsleds as his bed. This was the band of international brothers who had given him a place to sleep when times were hard for him in Europe and ``skeleton'' meant nothing more to Americans than a bag of bones.

``I've come an awful long way,'' said Jimmy Shea, born in Hartford and raised in West Hartford.

What happened next will be debated as long as they link the five rings and summon men and women from around the world each quadrennial.

Maybe it was as simple as runners on a 3-foot-long sled straightening down the stretch for a perfect ride to the finish line. Maybe it's a simple as ticks on a clock, ticks that led to a combined winning time of 1:41.96.

But those who believe that are doomed to know only half the story.

Jimmy Shea's father, a man not ordinarily given to spiritual rants, is convinced his dad gave his son a last-second push toward the finish line.

And as unusually large flakes of snow fell on the Utah Olympic Park, who was to say Jim Shea Sr. was a crazy man? The weather made it difficult to see. The way those sleds roar down the pipe, who can say something supernatural did not occur?

Certainly, not Jimmy Shea.

``He was with me the whole way,'' Shea said. ``I just think he had some unfinished business before he went up to heaven.

``I think he can go now.''

There was a brutality afoot in the Bavarian Alps in 1936, and a young political science major from Dartmouth was not blind to the Nazi menace. Lake Placid had a significant Jewish community and its leaders asked Jack Shea not to compete. The reigning gold medalist agreed. He made a stand.

``A lot of people in the U.S. delegation didn't like it a bit,'' Jim Sr. said. ``But my dad showed great fortitude.

``Jim showed he's tough, too. He fought to get his sport in the Olympics. I'm just glad [Salt Lake Olympic Committee president] Mitt Romney supported him, or Jimmy would still be camped on his doorstep.''

Jimmy Shea said he knocked at ``every henhouse, every doghouse, every outhouse, even the White House twice,'' to plead skeleton's case. Jack Shea backed him every step of the way, right to the finish line at the 2002 Olympics.